Star Wars Outlaws Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Alright. Let's not beat about the space bush here. We genuinely thought that Star Wars Outlaws could have turned out pretty bad. A mediocre-at-very-best sort of affair. Just reskin any old Ubisoft-style open world game with Star Wars stuff and be done with it. Money in the bank.

However, despite ourselves being so totally done with Ubi-style open world games (this writer in particular), over the past 35 or so hours we've been having an absolute blast with this game because of one very important aspect that Massive Entertainment has nailed. The vibes. The vibes in this one are immaculate in how they give you a Star Wars universe stripped of the usual Jedi/Empire pomposity and stifling politics.

This is lawless rogues and renegades, the slippery denizens of Mos Eisley cantina, criminal cartels, pew-pew laser gunfights, battered speeder bikes and all the stuff that was actually really cool about the movies (ok so there's no lightsabers, but we've gotten over it). Playing the role of Kay Vess just feels cool, it looks cool (for the most part), and even early doors before the game shows its full deck, there's lots to enjoy in just absorbing surprisingly detailed and atmospheric locations from the various movies whilst shooting folk in slow motion.

It's fitting really, given that the movies, let's face it, are very much held up entirely by cool vibes, too. It's what we want, what we need and what we expect from Star Wars. The acting is usually rough, the dialogue atrocious, but there's awesome spaceships, AT-AT walkers and those wee sand lads who make noises, so all the dud stuff sort of takes a back seat. Here it's the gameplay mechanics that are...well...decent, they do the job, but it's those all-encompassing Star Wars vibes that make it.

As Kay Vess, in a story that we found engaging throughout (no spoilers here) you find yourself in a bit of a tight spot with a crime syndicate and need to put together a squad to pull off a heist for big time money. Kay needs to rise through the ranks, make important pals, get to know the life of a renegade and prepare to run with the big fish. From this simple setup we get to travel to various exciting planets from the movies and play a Han Solo-esque role, shooting baddies and playing gangs off each other via a surprisingly robust factions system, as well as blasting around on a customisable speeder bike. To be honest, that would probably have been enough for us, but there's loads more that we didn't expect.

Sitting down to play Star Wars Outlaws for the first time, we were concerned that it had bitten off way more than it could chew in giving players big, detailed open world sections to explore, whilst also introducing space travel and even space combat. You could say that we had a bad feeling about it. However, not only are these space bits good, they actually beat out a lot of games (hi, Starfield) when it comes to transitioning between planet surfaces and space, making for a hugely atmospheric system of travel that adds a ton of, you guessed it, vibes, to proceedings.

Locking onto a planet and rocking down through its atmosphere to unveil some great big city or incredible vista is amazing (we imagine) at the best of times, but when you're arriving into these places like Tatooine, places that you feel know so well...it's just very exciting. What's more, the space sections look fantastic, with great big colourful planets, asteroid belts and junk everywhere, and the dogfights - whilst fairly simplistic - feel and look slick, too.

Then, planetside, where we expected the ho-hum aspects of these sorts of games - the collectathon, tower-climbing and so on - to sort of take hold and ruin everything, well, Massive has decided no to that. Yep, they've pared back the collectathon side of things, bringing it more in-line with the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 in how it promotes a more natural evolution and progression to the things you find and collect. There's still lots of busywork, but it just doesn't feel as such.

We also lose 'towers' as a means to open up your world map, which is another blessing. We should also say that this is a Star War that feels much more lived in and alive than the recent Jedi games from Respawn, which has come as a big surprise. It may not be as flashy, and we can't do awesome Force stuff, but it's certainly more engaging in the downtime, more all-encompassing in how it's presented with its seamless transitions to space.

It also adopts a bit of an Elden Ring approach in how it gives us great big open areas to tool around and rank up in. These then sit alongside dungeons of sorts; bespoke areas that you'll enter and stay in to complete stealth sections and various other infiltration (and guns blazing) missions.

So, some of our own personal issues with open world busywork are largely addressed here, and instead of resting on their laurels with the fighting and stealthing, we also get some robust-ass sneaking about that's reminiscent of both Splinter Cell and even the most recent Deus Ex games.

Have we lost our minds? Yes, but that's unconnected to what we're saying right now. The level design and choices presented in almost every mission are impressive in a way we just didn't expect, making for an experience that progresses to feel like one made by a team that just gets what it's doing - leaning into everything it could make awesome about being an outlaw.

There are hours of premium-grade sneaking around and pew-pewing folk here, loads of opportunities to hustle, backstab and climb through miles of vents. You've also got serious fan-service in the lore and world-building, as well as stuff like Sabacc. Yes, Sabacc! And it's not just some lazy half-assed card game, either. This is a whole game in and of itself, and there are even special cards and bonuses hidden around the world to improve your deck with. It's great, and it feeds into an overall quality and care in the loot and collectibles systems that you'll interact with here.

The various factions that you can play off one another and the way in which you take on their missions is all absorbing, too. None of your decisions have any huge ramifications, but that's ok because we didn't come for that. It's finely balanced, not enough to bog things down in big choices, but just enough to give you what you need to roleplay an outlaw, to feel like you have the space and power to pick and choose who to align with or screw over at any time, which is a perfect way to set you up and off into this galaxy.

In terms of the core combat, Kay has a pistol that can cycle through various functions, such as regular fire, electric and power modes. Of course, these then feed into environmental and combat puzzles that are all of a decent standard, and you can also pull off an absolute load of different stealth takedowns from the shadows, or use Kay's cutesy pal, Nix, to do the sorts of things that Sam Fisher would be proud of. We fully expected Nix to be an annoying pain in the ass, because we're jaded of course, but our little furry bundle is actually this game's way of allowing you to do all that crap you can do to electronics and so on in Watch Dogs.

As it turns out, you see, Nix is a violent little rascal, a fearless fiend who will tear into enemies without hesitation, fetch weapons and flip switches like a boss. Heck, Nix will even blow stuff up if told to. This fluffy little b***ard has got more bodies on its belt than most Stormtroopers. It's actually kinda terrifying.

You can pick up weapons dropped by enemies during firefights, so you get to play around with guns you'll recognise from the movies, too. Add in a simple cover system, some rappeling and swinging about, Red Dead-style slo-mo shooting (which looks crazy cool on speeder bikes), then bring it all together with that stealth system and boom! This is a very good Star War.

We haven't even mentioned all the Star Wars universe-styled versions of well-known arcade machines in the various bars you'll visit as you pick up random jobs from scumbags, or a bunch of other cool stuff about the main campaign story either - which we don't want to spoil in the slightest here. We haven't detailed how the controls and feel of your speeder improve as you level up, or that levelling up in general here is a tidy, unfussy affair that doesn't require you spend aeons in the game's menus instead of having fun shooting stormtroopers.

Star Wars Outlaws really has genuinely taken us by surprise, then; we're still playing after review, which is always a very good sign, and we already can't wait to get our hands on whatever DLC they chuck our way over the season ahead.

Just like Avalanche Studios' superlative Mad Max, this is an open world effort that absolutely screams "incredibly average" at you as you approach it. However, forgive some rough edges, accept a few run-of-the-mill mechanics, let those vibes and an obvious love of the source material do the hard work, and you'll have a blast.

Finally, and with regards to performance, there are the usual performance and quality options here, including a middle of the road 40fps mode. We highly recommend playing on the performance mode, as it feels smoothest in combat and we couldn't see a huge difference in how it all looked. The 40fps mode is a decent in-between, although once you've played 60fps it feels a bit clunky. The full quality mode just isn't worth the framerate tumble as you can really sense it in the game's combat. We didn't experience any particularly notable bugs either, beyond a bit of pop-in and some rough textures here and there.